Our blog posts on Australian English

Australians wear thongs on their feet!
It is a common assumption to think that Australian English is basically British English but with a deeper tan and a more easy-going attitude. Yes and no.

Forget crikey! Nothin’ more Aussie than a cuppa and a bikkie
… Australian English has at the extreme end those idiosyncratic phrases born of the country, the people, and sometimes a desire to affirm identity by excluding others. And we have that jumble of vocabulary judiciously or haphazardly picked from both the UK and North America, Aboriginal languages and various migrant languages

Skivvies of every colour
In my four-year-old perception of the world I lived not far away from Ramsey Street. My mother would wistfully sigh at Neighbours over the ironing and point out ‘our kettle’ and ‘our park’ and ‘our shopping centre’. In my head my Dad probably worked in Lassiter’s with Paul Robinson.

Strine – it’s a class thing
Unlike Britain, and to a broader sense America, where you can travel from region to region and hear people speaking differently, Australians don’t seem to sound any different as you travel round the country.

Child’s ply
“Everyone here calls me Mike,” my father declared as we were waiting at Melbourne airport for our connecting flight to Adelaide. … “They’re all saying it,” … “Thanks Mike, excuse me Mike, hello Mike.” Even as an 11-year-old, I knew it was very strange that anyone should call my dad – an ageing Middle Eastern man with only a passing acquaintance with English – the ostensibly white English name of Mike. …

Australian English slang – part one: origins
Our whole history of slang has been a mixture of the derivative and the original. The first record of Australian English was an account of convict language, brought to the colony by the thieves of London and generally referred to as “the Flash Language”.